The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 1 – 9
The wicked deserve destruction, the Bible is clear on this. Yet God does not destroy the wicked (Psalms 73:3-12). Why not? Luke 23:34. So it is because of ignorance that God can ignore the sins of the wicked, for now. Because grace comes by ignorance. Matthew 5:45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Was Paul born, and called, by grace? Galatians 1:15. Before you are called, are you by definition disobedient? Luke 5:32. Did one man’s sin bring death to ALL men (100% of mankind)? Romans 5:12. Then did Christ bring grace to those same men? Romans 5:15. So then as ALL (100%) received condemnation through Adam, HOW MANY receive grace (the free gift) through Christ? Romans 5:18.
If God were judging the world, He would have to send rain to the good, and drought to the evil. Yet God, because He knows they are ignorant, can send good things to the good and evil alike. Because He is not judging their sins today (John 12:47). For now, He is winking at their sins, pretending not to see them (Acts 17:30).
But only for a time – the very next verse, Acts 17:31 says that the day is coming when He WILL judge the world. Just not today. Today, their sins are hidden under the grace which is given to all men (Titus 2:11). And the more sin they have, the more grace they must have to cover those sins (Romans 5:20). Obviously these sinners in the world did not have faith – or they wouldn’t be sinners! Yet they have grace – grace which came without faith. But the Bible says grace comes by faith!
Romans 5:2 (WEB) through whom we also have our access by faith into THIS grace in which WE stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. How can we harmonize these two ideas? The same way we harmonized buying spices before and buying spices after a sabbath! There must be two graces, one that comes by faith and one that does not! If you’re looking for it, you can see now that’s exactly what this verse says! Paul stresses, twice, that he is speaking of THIS grace, in which WE stand! Peter makes it clear that there is more than one grace when he says, “THIS is the TRUE grace of God wherein YE stand” (1 Peter 5:12) – which means there must be another, lesser grace wherein OTHERS stand. 1 Peter 4:10 (WEB) …as good managers of the grace of God in its various forms.
1 Peter 4:10 …as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. “Manifold” literally means “many-sided” – so the Bible specifically says there are MULTIPLE forms of grace – only one grace, but several USES, several FORMS in which it can appear! Like the broken laws that it covers, grace must also have positive, negative, internal, and external sides!
DIFFERENT GRACE FOR DIFFERENT COVENANTS
Remember the purpose of the Old Covenant; a bare-minimum covenant that was designed to allow the stubborn Israelites to continue to live after their many sins in the wilderness. Did they have faith? Hebrews 4:2. So they had no faith, yet God overlooked all their internal sins. Their external sins He punished, usually – but not systematically (Jeremiah 10:24, 30:11). In fact, He deliberately delegated their correction to someone else so that He could personally ignore their sins to give them grace! (Exodus 23:20-22, Exodus 33:2-3). So He overlooked most of their external sins as well as internal sins, and delegated their judgment to an angel, and in turn to Moses.
But this grace was not intended to bring them into the Kingdom of God, for it was “not mixed with faith in the Israelites”. This was physical grace, negative grace, designed to overlook internal and external sins and allow physical people to enjoy a physical life for the limited amount of time that we are allotted. But what if that grace had been mixed with faith? Would it then become THIS grace, wherein WE stand? Numbers 14:21-24. Notice the contrast there! These men saw God’s mighty works and were still afraid! They still had no faith! Only Caleb and Joshua believed God could conquer Canaan for them! (Numbers 13:30-31, Numbers 14:6-11).
Why? Because only Caleb and Joshua “followed God FULLY” – internally and externally! Remember, to have faith in God you must know that you are pleasing Him, by keeping the WHOLE law! Joshua and Caleb did this, and they were the only ones out of two million Israelites who lived to enter the Promised Land! Joshua and Caleb were no more righteous, externally, than most of the rest of Israel, but their sins were covered because they trusted God! Because their grace was mixed with faith! And they had faith because they were more righteous internally! Which gave them the grace which lead to their salvation in the Promised Land!
FATHER OF THE FAITHFUL
Read Romans 4:3. Notice that Abraham BELIEVED God, and God treated that belief as if it were righteousness. Not that it WAS righteousness, but AS IF it were righteousness! But was Abraham unrighteous? Genesis 26:5. Did Abraham BELIEVE God (have faith)? Genesis 15:6. But was Abraham COMPLETELY righteous? Did he have ANY sins at all? 1 John 1:8, Romans 3:23. But could Abraham have had faith if he had ANY sins OF WHICH HE WAS AWARE? 1 John 3:21-22.
So Abraham could NOT have had any sins of which he was aware, or he could not have had such faith! Yet Abraham must have had sins, for all do! But they can only have been sins OF IGNORANCE! And those don’t count against faith! …And yet those sins of ignorance were still sins. Is there still a penalty for them? Leviticus 5:17, Romans 5:14. But are sins counted against you (imputed) when you don’t know about them (don’t have the law in your mind)? Romans 5:13.
Let’s say Abraham had a dozen sins of which he was unaware – sins of ignorance. Abraham was doing ALL HE KNEW, and what more can God ask than that? If you’re doing ALL you know, God can be confident that you will obey anything else He shows you, for you’re obeying all you know NOW! (Genesis 22:12). If Abraham had a dozen sins of ignorance, Abraham was not righteous. But Abraham didn’t know any better! And so God didn’t count those sins, and treated Abraham AS IF he were perfectly righteous!
And God did that because of Abraham’s faith – because he obeyed all that he knew! Since Abraham didn’t know about those sins, God “did not impute sin” to him! Hence, he had righteousness without the law – and was justified without works! While he was yet a sinner! Does that mean Abraham didn’t need to keep the law? That he should avoid discovering new sins, so that he could “stay under grace”?
Is it possible to have faith without works? James 2:18. Is it of ANY use, to say you have “faith” and DO NOTHING? James 2:14. Does it help a starving man to say “God bless you!”? Does it really? Do empty words fill a belly? James 2:15-16. And is faith without works of the SAME value to God? James 2:17 Was Abraham justified by faith AND works? James 2:20-23. Is a man justified by faith? Romans 5:1. But is he justified by faith ALONE? James 2:24. Does Paul (when teaching Gentiles) tell us that not hearing the law, but DOING the LAW justifies you? Romans 2:13.
Does Christ command us to do good works to glorify God? Matthew 5:16. Is every man rewarded according to his faith? Matthew 16:27. Was Tabitha praised for her faith? Acts 9:36. Must you PROVE your repentance with WORKS? Matthew 3:8. Did this same message go to Jews AND to Gentiles? Acts 26:20. Were we created to do good works? Ephesians 2:10.
BECOMING AWARE OF SIN
Did Jesus’ sacrifice buy us grace? John 1:16-17, Romans 3:24. When should you deal with your sins of ignorance? Leviticus 4:27-28. When they come to your knowledge, THEN is the time to offer a sacrifice. For the OC, this was a blood sacrifice of an animal. For the NC, this is the blood sacrifice of a Lamb. Once you KNOW about a sin, if you continue to commit it, can your sacrifice be accepted – or can you receive the grace it bought? Hebrews 10:26-29. Once you find out about a sin, can you continue in that sin and continue to receive grace? Romans 6:1-2. Does not being under the penalty of the law mean we can now sin freely, because of grace? Romans 6:15-16.
Grace doesn’t give you an excuse to sin. Ever. If you know about a sin, it is ALREADY not covered by grace! Sinning more on purpose doesn’t bring more good things! How did Paul receive forgiveness for his sins? 1 Timothy 1:13. And UNTIL he received that mercy, did he have abundant grace? 1 Timothy 1:14. Why was there so much grace there? Romans 5:20. Can you know what sin is, without knowing the law? Romans 7:7. Without the law, does sin exist as far as you’re concerned? Verse 8. When you don’t have the law, does God blame your sins – even if there are TONS of them – on you? Romans 5:13. Why not? Romans 4:15.
But when the commandment comes to you, does sin “wake up” and suddenly God starts blaming you for it? Romans 7:9. And did this commandment symbolically kill Paul, when he learned that he was breaking it? Romans 7:10. Why did he find the commandment to be death? Leviticus 18:5. Because he broke the law, it was death to him! But was it the commandment, or the SIN, the BREAKING of that commandment, that slew him? Romans 7:11. So in reality, the commandment is a GREAT thing, but sin – the breaking of it – is the awful thing? Romans 7:12. Why then was the commandment used to kill Paul? Romans 7:13.
Sin killed Paul using the commandment as an excuse so that PAUL could LEARN! As part of the second half of God’s creation, this all happened so that SIN might appear to us as “exceedingly sinful” – in other words, so that Paul could learn HOW BAD SIN REALLY WAS! And learn that it was something to be avoided at all costs! Something Adam and Eve could not have known! Because that only comes by painful experience! (Hebrews 5:14). Doesn’t that make perfect sense of one of the most complex passages in the entire Bible – one that has confused theologians for centuries? And yet it fits perfectly with ALL other scriptures! It has been merged and harmonized! That’s when you know you’ve got the right answer!
Now turn back to Romans 4:1-3. Notice how much sense Abraham’s “faith being counted for righteousness” makes now! And continue on in Romans 4:4, and you’ll see that this “righteousness without works” is due to grace, setting the context as being about grace. Romans 4:5 explains that even if you DON’T do works (that is, if you break the law), if you believe (all three things, primarily that you are not breaking the law!), then that faith will be counted to you AS IF IT WERE righteousness because you believe you are pleasing God!
Romans 4:6-8 quote David saying “blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin”. To “impute” means to hold sin against someone. In other words, sin doesn’t count if you didn’t know any better. Grace! And so because David, like Abraham, loved the law and sought God “with his whole heart” (Psalms 119:10, 97-104), and diligently obeyed everything he knew to obey, he built faith, which in turn gave him GRACE to hide those sins of ignorance!
GRACE FOR ETERNAL LIFE
How did Paul say he was separated from his mother’s womb? Galatians 1:15. The grace which Paul received as a child and before his conversion COULD NOT have come by faith, for Paul DID NOT have faith while he was uncalled and yet carnal! So clearly, physical grace comes without faith. And we have that same grace for our physical sins of ignorance too, just as the world does – but we have in addition a grace which can ONLY come by faith! (Romans 5:2). Faith built out of obedience, and obedience built upon the law of God!
In order to be saved, you must have grace WITH FAITH (Ephesians 2:8). The grace which has been covering your sins all your life must be used together with FAITH to be saved! And that grace doesn’t come from you, it is the GIFT of God! So while the world has grace, they don’t have true faith based in the law of God. It requires BOTH to be saved! And so when God overlooks their sins through the physical grace He gives to all men, it is only enough to allow them to live a physical life.
On the other hand, when you have grace, and you add FAITH to that grace, you receive MORE grace, and since you are doing everything God could possibly ask of you, God sees you as perfectly clean and spotless from sin (even though He knows you’re not). You can be delivered from any sin of ignorance to avoid immediate physical death without faith. But in order to be delivered from your sins of ignorance and then to inherit eternal life, you must have that same grace, and faith! Which gives you the other side of that grace! The positive grace!
Romans 5:21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign THROUGH RIGHTEOUSNESS unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Grace without righteousness can only bring temporary, PHYSICAL life. When grace reigns through righteousness – the inevitable result of faith – it leads to ETERNAL life! Put differently, negative grace merely avoids death. But positive grace gives life!
Read James 4:4-8, specifically verses 5-7. God resists the proud – He gives them very little grace. He gives grace to the humble. WHO are the humble? 2 Chronicles 7:14. How do you be more humble? Jeremiah 44:10, Micah 6:8. Aren’t those the exact same things which bring faith – and therefore, grace? Romans 1:17. The fact that the world receives grace does not mean God likes them! Because they are proud, they cannot possibly receive “this grace”, spiritual grace, without REPENTING, and HUMBLING themselves before the will and commandments of God!
Those who are proud, and resist what knowledge of God they have, God resists! The more they know, and the stronger they resist, the harsher God’s judgment is, and the LESS GRACE THEY GET! Because the more they understand… the more the law claims them, and the less Jesus does! (Romans 4:15, 5:13). Faith comes by hearing the word of God, and changing to obey it! If your knowledge grows faster than your obedience, your faith will shrink – and with it, your grace. If your obedience can keep up with your knowledge, your faith will grow – and with it, your grace. How simple is that!
THE KEY TO JUDE
Truly understanding grace, faith, and works will unlock practically the entire book of Romans and make it make SENSE – for the first time! But it also unlocks Jude, for Jude’s entire topic was grace! Jude 1:3-4 showed his subject was grace, and the whole reason he wrote was to REMIND them that grace is NOT an excuse to sin. He then shows a list of examples, and if you pay close attention you’ll see these examples all have one thing in common: people being judged for sins! These examples were given to people who were abusing grace, to remind them what happened to other people who thought they could get away with sinning forever because of grace! In Jude 1:5 Jude says, “I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this”. They once knew the true facts about grace, but the meaning had been TWISTED by those certain men who “crept in unawares” and CHANGED it!
Then he gives the example of the stubborn Israelites – the ones who wouldn’t trust God were allowed to tempt Him only ten times before He condemned them to death in the wilderness – so their grace ran out! God only “overlooked” their sins for so long! And lest anyone think the angels that sinned have gotten away with anything, Jude 1:6 says that they still AWAIT their judgment – but they will be judged for their sins! Grace did not let them sin with impunity! Jude 1:7 shows that Sodom and Gomorrah likewise were judged by God. Remember, back in Genesis, God hadn’t been judging them – merely overlooking their sins. But they became SO evil that they attracted God’s attention (Genesis 18:21) so He went down personally to look at it and see if what He had heard was true; it was, and in that moment God stopped overlooking their sins of ignorance and destroyed them! Peter says this event was an EXAMPLE of how God will deal with the whole world (2 Peter 2:6).
Then in 2 Peter 2:14 Jude shows a final example of judgment upon ALL, showing the entire world’s grace is running out, and it’s only a matter of time before God returns to RULE the nations with a rod of iron! (Revelation 12:5). Even though there is rain on the just and the unjust today (Matthew 5:45), one day the wicked will be burnt to ashes under the feet of the righteous (Malachi 4:3). Even though they get grace today, it will only keep the wicked alive temporarily, and even that will only last until God gets really fed up! And when the world’s sin ledger is so full (Genesis 15:16), when grace can no longer cover their over-abundant sins… well, that’s what the book of Revelation is mostly about. The point is, physical grace doesn’t overlook your sins forever. It’s meant to be replaced by obedience, and faith, and spiritual grace!
The common thread of all of those examples follows the purpose Jude laid out in the beginning – to put you in remembrance that grace does NOT give you license to sin! That ALL sinners will have their judgment before God, and ALL men will give account of their actions and even their words! (Matthew 12:36).But for now God tolerates the sins of the world through grace; a grace period which God gives to ALL men, to allow them time to overcome their sins of ignorance, to avoid having to execute all mankind on the spot. Just as you have ten days to renew your license plates after they expire, or an extra few days to return an overdue library book.
As I’ve said before, everyone already understands grace perfectly! It’s just that they think when GOD uses grace it’s somehow different, somehow incomprehensible, not supposed to make sense! And so OF COURSE it doesn’t make sense to them! And yet… it does make sense if you just listen to the Bible. And now, hopefully, it makes sense to you.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
There is much more to be said about grace, and we will revisit the topic in many lessons before this course is over. Grace makes it possible to mathematically chart why God blesses sinners and how much He can. It explains why the sinners can have answers to prayer and why those who are in God’s church often have problems – simply because we know more, therefore God expects more of us (Luke 12:47-48). Even though we are objectively more righteous, we may easily be less righteous relative to what we know than a complete heathen!
As always, to anyone who would listen, the Bible said everything I’ve said here in one clear verse. James 4:17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, TO HIM IT IS SIN. The more you know, the more God blames you. The less you know, the less God blames you. Simple. Obvious. Derived from the Golden Rule – don’t you hold your employee who KNEW what you wanted more accountable than the employee hired last Thursday? Therefore, that’s how God treats you.
Let’s put everything you’ve learned today in modern terms. One day, you were walking along, ignorant of God’s law. Breaking it right and left, but all without knowing it. God had you under grace, which paid for those sins of ignorance – and the more sins there are, the more grace abounds! To paraphrase Paul “you were alive without the law once”. But then someone like me comes along and tells you that it is wrong to steal. I just gave you the commandment! And now that you KNOW about it, it’s no longer a sin of IGNORANCE, because it has come to your consciousness! And so grace CANNOT pay for it! So now you must die – or you must kill that sin and REPENT to continue living! Because SIN has revived! And the wages of sin is death! Romans 6:23.
So then when you repent, Christ’s blood forgives you, through mercy (not grace, which left when you were no longer ignorant!), and then you are once again full of faith doing everything you know! And therefore any other sins are not counted against you! But then I tell you lying is wrong! And once again, God can no longer give you grace for that sin, so you must repent, be forgiven, and again be under grace. How simple is that! This happens for every sin you’ve ever committed, and ever will commit – until you know of it, you’re not to blame for it! And the second you do, you’re expected to promptly repent and have Jesus pay the price for you… or else pay the price yourself!
Because grace is not given to allow you to continue to sin indefinitely. It’s one of many tools given to you to help you learn to act according to the Golden Rule! That means you need to use your grace efficiently “as a wise steward” to help you learn more, so you can do better! If you use your grace as an excuse for laziness, then you have missed the point of grace. If you try to atone for your sins by keeping the rituals of the law or doing good deeds, you’re frustrating the grace of God and again, missing the point (Galatians 2:21, Galatians 5:2-4).
But if you use your grace as a tool to help you discover and overcome sin, working together with your faith to root out everything your heart condemns you for and killing it, before it kills you, then you will grow in grace as you grow in the knowledge of God! Remember why we have grace, and why we have faith; faith is to teach us to be more righteous, by ensuring we are always obeying all we know. Grace is given to us to allow us time to discover and uproot our sins. When used together, these tools are far more powerful than either one alone!
Grace gives you time to discover your sins, and faith gives you a reason to uncover them; once you uncover them, God is more pleased with you, for He must overlook fewer sins; thus, He gives you more grace, which opens your eyes and leads to more knowledge! And as you obey that, knowledge leads to more faith as you uncover and stop more sins! This is how you “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord” (2 Peter 3:18). We start out with a grace like that possessed by the entire world. The process of conversion is about abandoning the sins that need that grace, and building better grace! Not a grace based on God’s pity, but a grace based on His delight in your obedience, and your FAITH!